


Anything You Can Do, I Can Do...

by neveroffanon



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: F/M, after poor lucy, mentions of binge drinking, set at some point during s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:42:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24413038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neveroffanon/pseuds/neveroffanon
Summary: Beth has a drink and makes a phone call.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35





	Anything You Can Do, I Can Do...

“I just wanted to say goodbye. You know,” she blows her nose until it honks. “Dean was being, and the kids, and the dealership. And the only thing going right, was him.” She hiccoughs, everything that she’d swilled down in the last half hour ominous at the back of her throat. She gulps, hot tears falling down onto her lips, her chin. A hand hoves into view holding an open pack of the cute tissues, the ones she always wants to buy from Walgreens but never does because the big boxes are cheaper, and using toilet paper is cheaper still. She’d never understood why people insisted that they must blow their noses with a different tissue than the one they wiped with. It was all the same paper. It was all just junk that came out of the body, usually at just the wrong moment. 

She wails, remembering a horrifying moment in the store with Kenny barely able to talk, so upset that she wouldn’t buy him a toy that he’d pooped into his pants. All she’d wanted was to get out of the house, for just a minute, just to see real adults, breath air that hadn’t the scent of baby wipes, baby oil, baby shampoo, baby powder. But Dean couldn’t, wouldn’t take care of them. The kids would cry for her, he’d said. Never mind that she wanted to cry too, even as she loved them.

The hand presses the tissues to her eyes, gently wiping away the tears as they come, then pulls away and tucks the packet into her balled fists. Beth sniffs, chokes a little on the phlegm. She can feel that she’s a mess, but the bourbon she’s drunk and the wine and whatever else she could lay her hands on has her floating, as much as it’s twisting her stomach into greasy, sinuous knots. 

“I thought about it, you know. Before. For as long as I could, but they’re my babies.” She stops the next fall of tears with the wooly sleeve of her coat. “What is that people used to say? Bros before hos or whatever. Well, they need to come up with one for broke mothers with four children to feed. What was I supposed to do? What would _you_ have done?”

Just above her on the bench top, the blurred figure shifts and sighs. 

“Probably woulda done something different, mama.”


End file.
